Dear Steven Moffat: The Husbands of River Song

Dear Steven,

I’ve often wondered if your Doctor Who Christmas specials would be better if the BBC lied to you and said they’d be going out in April. It would surely change the way you approached the task, so instead of staring at that flashing cursor with a mind to crowbar in festive iconography or stuff the pudding with sentimentality and yuletide whimsy, you’d just write the best script you could. Sure, I don’t know what that means these days and neither do you, but it could result in a story with a little dramatic integrity…and no snow…and no comedians hamming it up in key roles. Can you imagine it, Steven? Because I can, and did while “The Husbands of River Song” made light of bigamy and gold digging on Christmas Day.

So this was a romp then and a relief for you, no doubt, because the Christmas brief allowed you to play to your strengths (jokes, surrealism, lashings of shtick) while giving licence to dump all the stuff we expect of the series proper (drama, plot, stakes, consequences). This was an episode for the fans, and by fans I mean pissed up geeks masturbating furiously at the re-introduction of River Song, revelling in her sexually liberated, mercenary brand of sass.

This was, we inferred, the occasional companion’s final (from her point of view) chronological appearance – the last staging post on the journey to Tennant and Tate, so you were determined to make it celebratory. This walking headfuck, possibly the most problematic subject of Who Do You Think You Are? ever, would have one last chance to shine while the Doctor retained a respectful supporting role – anonymous for the most part, due to the comic conceit of River having no knowledge of his thirteenth face.

Did we buy the idea of River not recognising the Doctor? Well at first it was enjoyable enough, but as the story went through its inconsequential paces there was the sense that Song had taken a dose of horse tranquilisers. The man she mistook for an intergalactic surgeon answered to the name of “The Doctor”, which in isolation was no give away, but he also seemed to be a know-it-all who took the piss, feigning amazement at the TARDIS interior, and had useful suggestions on how the time machine worked which just happened to be exactly right. That, plus the constant prompts about his identity, ‘don’t you recognise me?’, ‘don’t you know me?’, should, I feel, have been enough to tip off a woman of River’s intelligence. But for comic reasons alone the misunderstanding continued for most of the episode, denying these two long standing characters a chance to engage in a reunion of any substance.

Instead you used the conceit to tease the suggestion that River wasn’t the Doctor fan girl we always supposed. As someone who believes that each of us is different with different people, that in effect there’s no such thing as a consistent character, I was pleasantly surprised to find this idea gaining a little currency on my Christmas drool box.

You took a chance and had River be a bit of a bitch – someone who was happy to kill a man to get the diamond in his brain, who presumptuously stole the TARDIS without the Doctor’s permission and helped herself to the brandy and, when talking to a man she believed to be a stranger, categorising the Doctor as no one special but ‘terribly useful’. Capaldi played the disappointment beautifully, with great understatement, yet remained on side when most of us would be thinking of taking Song straight to the date and place of her death without further delay.

But this was a Christmas episode of course, so we ultimately learned this was all self-protecting brio on River’s part, and that she did love the Doctor, but liked to pretend otherwise as her feelings almost certainly weren’t reciprocated. In an ideal world, one in which the Doctor remained in character, he’d love her the way you and I regard the cat or our favourite jumper, but on this most mawkish of holidays there was the unwelcome suggestion that Capaldi’s Time Lord felt a bit more than that. There was even an idiotic fairy tale caption at the end to underline the point.

River and the Doctor lived happily ever after? Well only if you count a 24-year long night out as forever and ignore Song’s certain death. Incidentally I tried to work out how a restaurant that served a clientele who booked for 24 years at a time would operate, but was defeated. When the manager told the Doctor to come back in four years, did she mean four of hers or four of his? Did she really mean, ‘come back in 96 years’? And why do they celebrate Christmas on Darillium anyway? Or indeed anywhere else in the universe bar Earth? Are we exporting it in the future? I mean, why should any alien culture be interested?

So “The Husbands of River Song” was just good natured filler, really; an episode you had in your pocket in the event you ran out of ideas for festive specials. Effectively an emergency episode, it was light hearted, fun and a few of the jokes raised a smile; I suppose if that’s the test for a Christmas special then it passed. But do these seasonal farts have to be throwaway? Would it not be better to use the guarantee of a captive audience on Christmas Day to unleash a feature length slab of knockout, mythos-deepening drama, with implications we’d talk about for months to come, ahead of the new series premiere? What’s that, be grateful for Greg Davis and Matt Lucas? Well I hope you have a real fire at Chez Moffat because you’ll be getting coal next year.

Yours in time and cyberspace,

Ed

P.S: This year’s movie reference was Spies Like Us and a reprise of the fake Doctor surgical procedure. It was funnier when Chase and Aykroyd did it.

P.P.S: Did the Doctor need to retain his sonic sunglasses now he has a new screwdriver? Did the TARDIS not generate a fresh one as a polite way of saying, ‘ditch the shades, idiot’?

P.P.P.S: Was it me, or was the 54^th century street on Mendorax Dellora just the London alien street from Face the Raven with added snow and Christmas decorations? How cheap do you have to be to reuse a distinctive set from 3 episodes ago?

P.P.P.P.S: “The pandorica opens; that sounds exciting.” Not as exciting as it could have been, sadly. But we won’t get into that.

P.P.P.P.P.S: Catching a diamond with your tits. Great party trick.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S: “How are the twins?” “Still digesting their mother, thanks for asking.”

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S: “You wouldn’t know if I look nice or not.” A nice bit of backtracking from you there. Of course Capaldi professes not to have any understanding of what constitutes a pleasant human appearance – an idea given some credence by his choice of clothes in his sixth incarnation – but this didn’t really seem to be a problem for his predecessors. Anyway, why the fuck not? Does anyone really care anymore? See you next year!

The Old Man and the C: 

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Magician’s Apprentice
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Witch’s Familiar 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Under the Lake
• Dear Steven Moffat: Before the Flood
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Girl Who Died
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Woman Who Lived
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Sleep No More 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Face the Raven 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Heaven Sent/Hell Bent

The Clara Oswald Show:

• Dear Steven Moffat: Deep Breath 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Into the Dalek
• Dear Steven Moffat: Robot of Sherwood
• Dear Steven Moffat: Listen
• Dear Steven Moffat: Time Heist 
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Caretaker
• Dear Steven Moffat: Kill the Moon
• Dear Steven Moffat: Mummy on the Orient Express
• Dear Steven Moffat: Flatline
• Dear Steven Moffat: In the Forest of the Night
• Dear Steven Moffat: Dark Water/Death in Heaven
• Dear Steven Moffat: Last Christmas

Smith – The Dark Suit Jacket Years: 

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Time of the Doctor
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Day of the Doctor (50th Anniversary Special)

• Dear Steven Moffat: Doctor Who Live (Capaldi reveal)

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Name of the Doctor 
• Dear Steven Moffat: Nightmare in Silver
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Crimson Horror
• Dear Steven Moffat: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
• Dear Steven Moffat: Hide
• Dear Steven Moffat: Cold War
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Rings of Akhaten
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Bells of Saint John
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Snowmen
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Angels Take Manhattan
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Power of Three
• Dear Steven Moffat: A Town Called Mercy
• Dear Steven Moffat: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
• Dear Steven Moffat: Asylum of the Daleks

Smith in his Pomp:

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe (Christmas Special)
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Wedding of River Song
• Dear Steven Moffat: Closing Time
• Dear Steven Moffat: The God Complex
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Girl Who Waited
• Dear Steven Moffat: Night Terrors
• Dear Steven Moffat: Let’s Kill Hitler
• Dear Steven Moffat: A Good Man Goes to War
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Almost People
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Rebel Flesh
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Doctor’s Wife
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Curse of the Black Spot
• Dear Steven Moffat: Day of the Moon
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Impossible Astronaut

Deep Time:

• Paradoxica: An open letter to Steven Moffat (The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang)
• Doctor Who-ha! (The Eleventh Hour)